Yoga room: how should you style it?

If yoga is your main passion in life, you may want to learn how to style a cozy, relaxing, zen yoga room. Read the article and zen up your life!

This Eastern body practice has been gaining growing consensus and popularity for quite a few years now. If you’re a yoga enthusiast, you must be already familiar with the many reasons why. A few days of regular yoga activity will boost your immune system, reduce chronic pain, improve your lung capacity, lower your blood pressure… Not to mention the ability of yoga to dramatically reduce your stress levels and improve your ability to focus! Especially if you live a stressful life, full of deadlines, meetings and responsibilities, yoga is one of the best ways to keep a balanced (aka sane) mind. So actually, even if you’ve never practiced yoga before, now may be the right time to start, as the abundance of online tutorials will make it easy-peasy to get started, and do you know the best thing about it? All you need is a tutorial -- if you’re a beginner -- and your very own yoga room!

A yoga room should be minimal, but there are some essentials that just can’t be missing. One of them is of course, greenery. Indoor plants will help you establish a connection not only with the natural world, but will help connecting with your deepest inner emotions, as plants, pretty much like other natural elements like fire, encourage you to open yourself up to your most primal and primitive self. However, be very mindful of what type of pots and planters you want to get. Our suggestion is to keep it very basic and simple: don’t overdo it with shape, color, material. A neutral terracotta vase should do the trick; a brilliant idea would be to get one you can just place on the floor, creating the visual expression of a connection to our roots.

As for the floor, there are various options you can consider. The first (and, in our humble opinion, best) is a solid wood floor. You’ll probably be walking barefoot all the time inside this room, so you want to make that a positive experience, rather than one that sends unwanted shivers down your spine! Plus, the warm neutrality of the wood will do wonders to help you feel immediately more relaxed, and the lack of distracting color and geometric patterns will make sure you won’t get easily distracted. As for the finish, we’d avoid a lacquered surface: let wood shine in all its natural, raw beauty! A shiny timber floor is most definitely not the right choice for a yoga room.

Here the choice is between a classic and functional yoga mat, and a rug. Of course, for functionality’s sake, a yoga mat is never a wrong choice; moreover, from a financial point of view, it’s probably a less expensive choice than a rug. However, there is something about a handwoven rug that is just too appealing to resist! Here we’d go for an exception to the neutrality rule: go bold! Keep neutral colors, but opt for an intricate pattern. Nothing too geometric, though: we’re talking about an intricate, abstract pattern your mind will follow with its third eye. Believe us, it will do wonders for your ability to meditate and take your mind off anything that’s not important in the now.

Another option for your floor is, of course, a wall-to-wall carpet. It may be the right choice if you’re really aiming to get the ultimate cozy atmosphere in this room. Our personal preference goes towards timber, but we completely understand your love for carpets! Just make sure you choose one with an overall neutral design! It doesn’t mean it needs to be monochromatic or plainly boring, but it cannot end up being a distraction.

Again, pretty much as with the floor, the options are several. Some would suggest stark white walls, in order to create a bright, solar room. Others would suggest a neutral shade or pastels; as for us, we believe you have all the room to be creative and original even when you should maintain a certain level of sobriety! For instance, you can choose a customized wallpaper with a white background, splashed with a discrete shade, like in the picture below. The contrast between the minimal, essential overall look of your yoga room and the moderate richness of your wallpaper will create a subtle but powerful dynamism that will go a long way to supercharging your chakra energy.

Light is key when it comes to practicing yoga. We’re assuming that most of you are probably going to practice it in the evening though, because unfortunately, our 9-to-5 jobs don’t really leave us much choice. In that case, you need to select an artificial light source that’s going to brighten up the room, but within limits. So for instance, rather than choosing a bright white light, which is what you’d normally go for in most rooms, you should opt for something a bit more subtle. In short, golden light is the type of lighting that will make sure you can feel relaxed enough to focus on your breathing and your inner consciousness.

However, for those of you lucky enough to be working from home, as well as for us on the weekend, at some point we might actually use some daylight! In that case, two are the suggestions we have. First of all, make sure you do have a decent source of natural light; why not try floor-to-ceiling windows? Secondly, you need to think of how to shield the room from the light in case it gets too intense. As you can imagine, you need curtains for this. Our suggestion is to get curtains with a white or pale background and green patterns: this way the light coming in will be a warm, green and natural glow.

Time to think about what else you’re going to do in this room! If you think yoga is not enough and you’d like to stretch out in other ways, or do some more exercises, like crunches for instance, you may think of equipping this room with other training supplies, like weights, barbells, or a comfy fit ball you can also employ as a chair for when you’re sitting at a desk.

As minimal as you may want this room to be, you should still outfit your room with some shelves for anything you may need before, during or after yoga: towels, incense burners, candles, a Bluetooth speaker, and so on.